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My Library

June 8, 2009 By Edmund Pickett

In Czarist Russia there were officially only three classes of people: nobility, clergy, and peasants. By the end of the 19th century though, there were coming to be more and more individuals who didn’t fit into the recognized categories. The children of merchants for example, or Jews, those with some university education, or ethnic minorities… Quite a few people were falling between the cracks and they became known as razochinetski, meaning those of no clearly defined social class. The label could be derogatory. Sometimes the word just meant “middle-class intellectual.” The czarist officials didn’t trust these people because knowing their background didn’t tell you much about them. They might be either communists or nationalists. In an unsettling way, each razochinetz seemed to be self-defined.

Osip Mandelstam, the poet, proudly accepted the label and said that the biography of a razochinetz was his bookshelf. In other words, he was what he had read. In the United States, social classes are said to be fluid, but we still have razochinetski and a library can still serve as a biography of sorts, especially for self-educated people, who have complete freedom to choose what they read.

Nobody made me read any of the following books. It’s not a list of every book I’ve ever read, just those I still have copies of. Actually I don’t have them because they’re in storage in two different countries.
The first book I ever read was called “The Cozy Little Farm,” and I have a picture of myself holding it. The first adult book I read was “Edison” by Josephson. It was a bit over my head at age ten, but Edison was my hero and I still recall many scenes. One of the illustrations is a reproduction of a letter, showing Edison’s unique calligraphy, which he developed when he was a telegrapher. It was designed to be clear, beautiful and fast. I retrained myself to write in that style, and still do, more or less.

MY LIBRARY (What’s Left of It)

HISTORY

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
The Peninsular War, Jac Weller
Ivan’s War, Catherine Merridale
A Nation Made by War, Geoffrey Perret
Eisenhower, Geoffrey Perret
The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer
The Second World War, John Keegan
The Boer War, Thomas Pakenham
The Age of Jackson, Arthur M. Schlesinger
Stalin, The Court of the Red Czar, Simon S. Montefiore
Lincoln, Redeemer President, Alan Guelzo
The Impending Crisis, David M. Potter
A Narrative History of the Civil War, Shelby Foote
Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward S. Gibbon
Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose
The Reformation, Diarmuid MacCulloch
A Short History of the Argentines, Felix Luna
At Home Among the Patagonians, George Musters
The Thirty Years War, C.V. Wedgwood
Anabasis (The Upcountry March), Xenophon
The Conquest of Mexico, Bernal Diaz
The Conquest of Mexico, W.S. Prescott
Emperor of China, Jonathan Spence
The Command of the Ocean, N.A.M. Rodger
The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman
The Face of Battle, John Keegan
Maus I & II, Art Spiegelman
Harvest of Sorrow, Robert Conquest
Treason By The Book, Jonathan Spence
Annals of Imperial Rome, Tacitus trans. Grant
Army of the Caesars, Michael Grant
Adventures of Capt. Alonso Contreras, trans. Dallas
Memoirs, vol. I, George Kennan
The Pacific War—1931-1945, Saburo Ienaga
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence
Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose